Light Will Guide you Home
by Fido the Finch
Summary: "He watched the light bounce off the debris formation with mixed fascination and resignation—it waved back and forth in a way that suggested his hand was violently trembling. But the heat became too much for his damaged fingertips, and he had to drop the match after only a few seconds, plunging him back into the dark. He clumsily lit another." An expansion of young Jason's death.


**A/N: Written for Batfam Halloween Content War, Day 6: Death.  
** **Based on Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Match Girl."  
** **Title from Coldplay's "Fix You."**

He thought the explosion would kill him.

Even after he opened his eyes, he thought he was dead. It was dark. Darker than anything he had ever seen. Gotham's light pollution didn't reach Africa, and judging by the weight he felt on top of him, he guessed it wouldn't matter anyway. No light can penetrate two stories worth of rubble.

He didn't hurt. He knew he should. Not two minutes ago, he had dragged himself across the warehouse floor with his less-unusable arm, and that had been pure agony. You would think that being blown to smithereens would hurt worse, but it didn't.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that was bad.

The rubble over him shifted—he could feel it press a little more heavily on his chest—and he coughed as a thick layer of dust partially smothered him.

"Bruce," he whispered, when the ringing in his ears quieted to a low roar.

But there was no reply. The rubble settled, and it was too quiet.

He tried to move his hand—the one attached to the less-damaged arm—around to feel this bubble he was trapped in, but before it could reach anywhere near where he knew his face was, it met something very solid. Probably the same thing that was resting on his chest, slowly pushing all his air out.

There was nobody to hear him, so he let loose a loud "Fuck" that was more defeated than angry. It dissolved into powerful coughs that left him gasping for breath.

He was going to die here. Buried under the rubble, his last breaths pulled from his lips with the cold hand of some unforgiving universe.

It was suddenly too much, the darkness. Jason Peter Todd was no scaredy cat, but in times like these, where there was nobody around to see him be afraid, he released his carefully-guarded front.

He was able to maneuver one of his hands to his utility belt and painstakingly dragged it around until he found the pouch he was looking for. But all of the emergency glow sticks were missing; the pouch was empty. He closed his eyes against the tears that itched there.

Then they flew open again. He fumbled another few seconds with his belt, and managed to find his case of matches. They were not Batman-issued; they were the ones he had snuck to patrols in case he needed a smoke.

He pulled one of the matches out blind, and swiped it against the rough exterior of whatever was pinning him to the floor.

The small cavern he was in flooded with light. It came from around a corner, so he couldn't see the match directly, but the warm glow was enough to keep the gloom at bay. He watched the light bounce off the debris formation with mixed fascination and resignation—it waved back and forth in a way that suggested his hand was violently trembling.

But the heat became too much for his damaged fingertips, and he had to drop the match after only a few seconds, plunging him back into the dark.

He clumsily lit another.

This time, when the light appeared, it was brighter than before, and grew until he had to shut his watering eyes.

"Sorry, Jay-lad, I didn't mean to wake you."

He opened his eyes and it was to a wonderfully familiar sight.

"Bruce?"

The man, framed by the grand fireplace in the sitting room of the manor, smiled and hushed him, setting aside the book in Jason's lap. Then he snuck his arms beneath Jason's shoulders and knees and softly lifted him to his chest.

Jason ducked his head under Bruce's chin and breathed in his familiar scent. On the exhale, he mumbled, "Where're we goin'?"

Bruce chuckled, and the sound reverberated through Jason's body. "Bedtime."

Jason hummed in half-hearted agreement. He reached an arm up to wrap around Bruce's neck, but it only sank through Bruce's shoulder.

Jason's eyes flew open when he dropped the hot match.

That was. . . he was hallucinating. He was dying faster than he had thought.

He lit another match with shaky hands.

The light that flickered off the walls was intermittently cut off by fuzzy black circles—typical of oxygen deprivation, a more cynical part of his mind thought—that made the display twinkle.

"It looks so different from up here," he said.

Batman hummed in agreement, pulling his cape tighter around Robin's shoulders as they watched Gotham's skyline glimmer.

Robin leaned against Batman's side, comfortable in the security. "Before, when I. . . the city was so big. And dark, and full of people who. . . I would avoid." He paused as a plane flew overhead. "But from up here—" he bounced his heels against the wall of the building they sat on the edge of "—there's something different, you know?"

"Perspective," Batman grunted.

Jason nodded. Somewhere above them, a streak of light pierced the sky. "Check it out," he said, pointing toward the decaying tail.

"Most meteoroids disintegrate upon entering the Earth's atmosphere."

Jason huffed a laugh. "Everything's a science lesson to you, old man." Then he stilled, eyes searching out the dimmer part of the city where he used to live. "My mom used to say that shooting stars were souls going to Heaven."

He felt Batman stiffen beside him, then relax and wrap an arm around Robin's shoulder and cape.

Jason leaned more heavily into Bruce's side, but Bruce's form was suddenly incorporeal and he fell.

His match managed to scorch his fingers before falling to the floor.

Jason cursed. At the tears in his eyes, at the pain waking from its catnap, but mostly at the lungs that were refusing to expand far enough for a decent breath. His fingers were going numb, so he dropped a few matches before managing to light one.

The light wasn't coming from around the corner this time; it came from somewhere above him. A crack, a gap, in the rubble forming his grave.

"Jason!"

He could only barely make out his name over the blood pounding in his ears. He opened his mouth to respond, but only managed to inhale another lungful of dust. He spluttered, unable to recover from the coughing fit the dust triggered.

"Jason!"

The light was getting closer, brighter, anyway. Jason's match went out, and he scrambled to light another. Maybe if Bruce saw his light, he'd be able to find him. The movements were clumsy and slow, but got the job done.

When the light flickered into view, there was a groan from the debris above him. Jason tried to call out, but found that he could no longer draw in breath. He waited, heart pounding and panic—and relief—building, as the sounds of digging and dragging got closer. Bruce would get there in time, he had to.

Finally, debris was lifted away from his face. The dark silhouette above him lowered a hand into his vision, and Jason went to take it—

His hand passed through like smoke.

Jason snarled, gasped, and in one burst of might, managed to light all of the remaining matches in one go. The hand was back, and solid, and dramatically different from Batman's or even Bruce's. He would know that hand anywhere.

His mother's hands lifted him from his pinned position effortlessly and held him close. Jason sobbed into the front of her shirt and hugged her as hard as he could.

"Jason, baby," she cooed.

"Mom," he gasped, squeezing all that much harder.

"No! Jason!"

Bruce fell to his knees beside his son's body. There was no pulse, no breath.

He screamed.

He gathered up his son's body, drawing the bloody head beneath his chin in a grotesque parody of what was once a normal gesture of comfort. He rocked back and forth, tears escaping his cowl and landing on the dusted curly hair of his young ward. His eyes found the matches scattered across the site, the shriveled testament of his son's true heart.

As he rocked, a star fell.


End file.
